Zusammenfassung

well, this is awkward...it's like running into someone on the street who you've been avoiding for months. but i felt it was time, difficult a task though it shall be to write about EVERYTHING SINCE FOREVER. but whatevs. i'll do my darndest.

well all right, let's see here: poland was pretty fly. the weather was beautiful, the food was good, the cities were surprisingly cool. we had a great guide, marcín, who was with us the whole time and made the trip really worth it. got to know the new kids, pretty cool on a whole. but yeah, lots of pierogis, lots of tyskie & zwyiec. on the last day we happened upon "poland-fest '09", as we called it, which was basically just a great street festival with polish sasages (ups to my chicago folk) and music and crafts and stuff. and THEN we were walking back to our meeting point and realized everyone on the entire plaza had pillows. i was like "this is a pretty poorly-done flashmob". but it was not a flashmob. it was a BATTLE. three teams lined up and for like half an hour chanted things and waved their pillows around. then at exactly 3pm, when this trumpeter sounded from the top of a church tower as he does every day, they ran at each other and had an ultimate pillow war. we found out later from our guide that this happens once a year - it's a fight between the three major universities in krakow, and we happened to be in the right spot at the time on the right day. craziness. and awesomess.

pictures of all of the above here: http://picasaweb.google.com/ballard.jw/Poland#

right and then i got back to berlin, and...the weather was beautiful! the sun shone, the birds sang, the white-tailed fawn munched lazily on fresh grass in the field. and so it has basically remained since then, which is AWESOME because it's a 180° turnaround from the winter. classes have started; they are as follows:

- Intro to German Linguistics
- Multicultural Berlin
- Advanced Vocab
- The North American Indian as an Integral Part of European Folklore
- Spanish
- Stage Combat

other than my stage combat class mysteriously disappearing for three weeks in a row (still haven't figured that one out yet) and my "native american indian" class mysteriously being taught by a frenchman in english (don't tell the NU german department), they are all going well - not too much work, not too stressful. already met a couple cool people in a few of them. oh and then on top of that is my sport courses: intermediate climbing, kayaking, and streetdance. the first is pretty self-explanatory, and also very fun. the second is awesome, we basically just go down to this place in berlin called eichwalde ("oak forest") and kayak down/through different rivers/forests in the city (there are forests in berlin, it's pretty crazy). the third one is amusingly named streetdance, which basically means hip-hop dance. my teacher is most attractive. it's hella fun. there will be a perfomance at the end. i very much enjoy it.

let's talk about these sport classes for a minute. unisport, as it is known, is a pretty fantastic idea, i gotta tell ya. now while i in some ways bemoan the lack of student clubs at german universities, they make up for it by offering unisport. this is basically just sport classes that are heavily subsidized by the university and therefore really cheap. you can do a ton of fun stuff, from boxing to tango to chess to weightlifting, most of which cost only like 20€ per semester. thats INSANELY cheap for, for example, a really good hour-and-a-half per week of boxing training for an entire semester. this allows you to try crazy things you wouldn't normally do, meet new people, and get exercise at the same time. it's probably less likely that one would do such activities at an american school because you have to really invest time if you even want to be on an intramural softball team or something like that. here, it's all so much simpler, and i love it.

right well, now it's time for "how much can james remember of the stuff he's done in the past month and a half?" in no particular order:

** may day (may 1st) in berlin is really, really crazy. people from all over germany come to berlin specifically for the rallies and riots on the first of may. my friends and i decided to do the smart thing and go to kreuzberg, the center of activity and home to about 2000 riot police. there were fires! there was teargas! there were bottles and stones thrown at police! there was techno music! it was an interesting experience. don't worry mom, i survived.

** i've just been doing a lot of grilling lately, because here you can grab a six pack and a grill and just head to the park and go for it. especially nice is volkspark friedrichshain. good atmosphere. and an outdoor bouldering rock! so lovely.

** i took a seven-hour bike tour through the area around berlin with my friend theresa and it was SO NICE. just being able to get outside on a beautiful day, bike through a gorgeous forest, get lost in my thoughts, have a picnic lunch with some cool new people...the best. not to mention they were all geography students so we DEFINITELY didn't get lost. i'm on a serious outdoors kick right now, all i want to do is be outside and like go camping and stuff. when i get back home i'm definitely gonna look into doing some bike-camping. actually theresa and i might be organizing a trip to the schwarzwald (black forest) to do a bike tour - ride through the forest from village to village, buy cuckoo clocks, etc. very excited about that.

** just went to a soccer match today - our team, hertha bsc berlin, was playing and we WON! 2-0. woohoo! it was pretty great. there were beer and bratwürste. i bought a scarf. i really want to catch some chicago fire games this summer.

** "lange nacht der theater und opern" (long night of the theatres and operas) was pretty awesome - you buy a ticket for 10€ and then take a shuttle route around to different theatres/operas in the city and see presentations of 30-minute pieces. did it with a couple of friends. and it was the first ever time berlin has done this, so pretty special, i'll have you know.

right well that's all that's really standing out at the moment. it pales in comparison to the daunting list of things i still have to do before i leave:

1. see a handball match (sabine vergiss nicht, dass du versprochen hast, mit mir zu gehen!)
2. go to the beach up north
3. see a "silent film concert"
4. see a puppet cabaret show
5. visit the immanuel's church that's next door to me
6. a number of museums
7. go to the black forest and hamburg
8. christopher street day parade (i.e. the berlin pride parade)
9. "carneval of cultures" - multicultural parade and street fest
10. explore tiergarten park
11. go to the zoo
12. go on a photo-taking/souvenier-buying expedition

as you can see, there is much to be done. and only three months in which to do it! ahh!! yeah it's REALLY weird that i'm registering for northwestern classes on monday. picking classes really pulled me back to evanston in a weird way. i mean i am excited for next quarter - fun, easy classes, maybe a stage combat internship if i'm lucky, a kickass new house. gonna be good. but i still have some time left in berlin.

with that, meine damen und herren, i shall take my leave. but not before a long-overdue installment of THINGS GERMAN PEOPLE HATE:

#28: German Words
Well okay not really, but I thought I should mention how fond they are of using English ones. Even when there are perfectly good German words that are no more complicated than their English counterparts. Like "highlighten", for example. The past tense turns into "gehighlightet", which I find hilarious. And yes, that's like, highlighting something on a page. Then just things like "shop" instead of "laden", "downloaden" instead of "herunterladen", something being a "must" instead of a "muss", coffee "togo [sic]" instead of "zum mitnehmen". Basically people think it's cool and hip to use English words. A lot of the time I just think it's silly. Not to mention when they use English words that aren't actually words in the English language. Like "Handy" for cell phone..."Beamer" for projecter..."Oldtimer" for classic car.

I also find it amusing that you can gauge how good you are at German by how well you know when it's more appropriate to use an English word instead of a German one.

#29: Using Headphones
This one mostly applies to trashy teenagers, but a ride on the S-Bahn train on a Saturday night wouldn't be complete without a group of kids (or sometimes just one kid) drinking and playing terrible techno music using their phone as a boombox. YOU ARE TRASHY GET A PAIR OF HEADPHONES AND AN EDUCATION.

#30: Intact Bottles
This may just be a Berlin thing, but seriously, they cannot handle just leaving their bottles as is. They have to smash them. It's an inexplicable, inborn urge.

#31: Talking Unnecessarily
This one refers to the phenomenon of the "German Pause". When a group of Germans is conversing, and at a particular moment nobody has anything of interest to say, it is perfectly acceptable for there to just be a pause. It's not awkward; they're just not like Americans who would make something up to fill the pause, regardless of whether or not it was a necessary contribution to the conversation. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you do it makes a lot of sense. Verdammte Amis.

Aight macht's gut, liebe Leute. Bis nächstes mal, whenever that may be.